This image provided by NASA shows La Niña continuing to strengthen in the Pacific Ocean, in September 2010.

“Events, my dear boy, events,” said British former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan when asked what represented the greatest challenge for a statesman. For many corporations today, it is “extreme weather events” which provide a headache for a CEO.

La Niña, Spanish for little girl, is a rather unthreatening name to describe a weather cycle which has wrought havoc since its emergence last summer. Its trail of destruction has been indiscriminate: floods in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, eastern Australia and South Africa have all been “consistent” with past La Niña phenomena.

Scientists suggest the recent Brazilian deluge and, perhaps more tenuously, the early cold winter in Europe, are similarly linked.